The present invention relates to lasers and particularly to a laser-diode-pumped solid-state laser and amplifier for producing laser emission at one or more laser wavelengths.
Lasers are devices that generate or amplify light. The beams of radiation that lasers emit or amplify have remarkable properties of directionality, spectral purity and intensity. These properties have already led to an enormous variety of applications. The essential elements of the laser device are (1) a laser medium consisting of an appropriate collection of atoms, molecules, ions or, in some instances, a semiconducting crystal; (2) a pumping process to excite these atoms, molecules, etc., into higher quantum-mechanical energy levels; and (3) suitable optical elements that allow a beam of radiation to either pass once through the laser medium that is in a laser amplifier, or bounce back and forth repeatedly through the laser medium, as in a laser oscillator. The laser oscillator contains an optical cavity or resonator which is defined by highly reflecting surfaces which form a closed round-trip path for light. The laser medium is contained within the optical cavity.
The elements of a laser come in a great variety of forms and fashions. One type of laser medium that has numerous advantages compared to others is the solid-state laser medium consisting of a laser crystal with one or more dopant ions that is, generally, optically pumped. The optical pump may be an incoherent source, such as cw lamps, including tungsten filament lamps or arc lamps, or pulsed lamps, such as flashlamps, or a monochromatic laser source. Monochromatic laser pump sources include ion lasers or dye lasers or semiconductor laser diodes, such as, an aluminum gallium arsenide (AIGaAs) laser diode operating at approximately 808.5 nm pumping a Nd:YAG solid-state laser material. As an example of this type of laser, see the article xe2x80x9cEfficient Laser Diode Pumped Nd Lasersxe2x80x9d by Richard Scheps in Applied Optics, vol. 28, pp. 89-91 (January 1989). Excellent examples of solid-state longitudinally pumped lasers are disclosed in the following U.S. Patents, the disclosures of which are incorporated herein:
U.S. Pat. No. 5,048,051, Sep. 10, 1991, Optically-stabilized piano-plano optical resonators, Zayhowski, John J;
U.S. Pat. No. 5,402,437, Mar. 28, 1995, Microchip laser, Mooradian;
U.S. Pat. No. 5,327,444, Jul. 5, 1994, Solid state waveguide lasers, Mooradian;
U.S. Pat. No. 5,200,972, Apr. 6, 1993, ND laser with co-doped ion(s) pumped by visible laser diodes, Scheps;
U.S. Pat. No. 6,173,001, Jan. 9, 2001, Output couplers for lasers, Zayhowski, John J.;
U.S. Pat. No. 5,256,164, Oct. 26, 1993, Method of fabricating a microchip laser, Mooradian;
U.S. Pat. No. 5,386,427, Jan. 31, 1995, Thermally controlled lenses for lasers, Zayhowski.
The above-cited patents show that laser-diode pumping of Nd:YAG lasers is well recognized. The laser-diode output radiation must substantially match the absorption wavelength of the Nd:YAG laser medium which, in general, corresponds to a wavelength of 808.5 nm. This matching of the laser-diode emission wavelength with the absorption wavelength and bandwidth of the Nd:YAG laser material at 808.5 nm is required for relatively efficient operations, both in terms of pumping efficiency, by which is meant the efficiency by which pump photons populate the upper laser level, and in terms of overall electrical power consumption by the pump diodes themselves to generate a specific amount of optical laser power from the Nd:YAG laser material. The absorption bandwidth of Nd:YAG is approximately 1 nm. It is both difficult and expensive to fabricate laser diodes or laser diode arrays with the proper power, bandwidth and center wavelength required for efficient pumping of Nd:YAG laser media.
Many longitudinally pumped miniature lasers (single-frequency Nd:YAG microchip lasers and Q-switched microchip lasers) are sufficiently short that only a small fraction of the incident pump light is absorbed as it passes through the gain medium. The efficiency of such a laser is improved when the output face of the laser is coated to reflect the pump light, thereby allowing double-pass absorption of the light within the gain medium.
The present invention is a miniature laser/amplifier system composed of an optical pump, a miniature laser, a lens and an amplifying medium. In one embodiment, the miniature laser is a typical longitudinally pumped miniature laser (single-frequency Nd:YAG microchip laser or Q-switched microchip laser), as described in the above-cited patents. As mentioned above, the efficiency of such a laser is improved when the output face of the laser is coated to reflect the pump light, thereby allowing double-pass absorption of the light within the gain medium. The total absorption may still be small, however. Additionally, the divergence of typical pump sources (diode lasers or optical fibers) is large enough that there is often poor overlap between the reflected pump light and the oscillating mode, and the efficiency of the device is not significantly enhanced.
If the output face of the miniature laser is coated to be highly transmitting to the pump radiation, the transmitted pump light can be collected with a lens and focused in to an amplifying medium (Nd:YVO4). The focusing optics will also focus the output of the laser, which may be concentric with the pump radiation, and good overlap between the collected pump light and the laser output can be obtained within the amplifier. If the amplifying medium is highly absorbing to the pump light and has high gain at the lasing wavelength, significant amplification can be obtained. The result is a simple, efficient, miniature laser/amplifier system pumped by a single pump source.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a miniature laser/amplifier that is pumped by a single source to output a beam with high-gain amplification.